They were in a Hotchkiss tourer, another of Maurice’s recent acquisitions, with the hood down, as they headed north to the picnic site at the Forest of St Germain. Williams and Maurice were in the front, Eve and Robert in the rear. Williams had suffered a restless night, because inside he wasn’t as at ease about the death of Legine as he had thought he should be. He was sure it would pass. That morning Robert showed him a badly printed copy of Combat, the underground paper. In it were strange pictures of the camps that the paper suggested were the final destinations for the trains, camps that made the hellhole of Drancy look like the Elysian Fields, so it claimed. It could be propaganda of course. The thought of those trains told him otherwise. Exactly why they took so much delousing powder along, though, was a mystery to him. Probably to stop typhus outbreaks. ‘Did you hear about the guy on honeymoon in Mexico?’ began Maurice. ‘Well, the local police chief, he warns him, he says, Señor, Speedy Gonzales, the fastest dick alive, is in town.
